


Letters to Leta

by wadebramwilson



Series: Fantastic Newt Verse [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Autistic Newt Scamander, Bittersweet, Character Study, Cinnamon Roll Newt Scamander, Friendship, Gen, Good Leta Lestrange, Neurodivergent Newt Scamander, No implied romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:21:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wadebramwilson/pseuds/wadebramwilson
Summary: Newt had been writing to Leta for years, ever since he’d been expelled. He wrote her all through the Great War, across five continents and four oceans. He wrote her nearly twice a week. Every day if he wasn’t too busy.Between his suitcase full of creatures, and his letters, Newt was never lonely.
Relationships: Leta Lestrange & Newt Scamander, Newt Scamander & Newt Scamander's Magical Beasts
Series: Fantastic Newt Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768852
Kudos: 38





	Letters to Leta

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written anything creative since 2013 but I just couldn't seem to leave Newt alone. I would love some honest feedback, especially if you like it but even if you don't. 
> 
> The idea for this fic was incepted by another which mentioned Newt writing to Leta in his travels but never receiving any reply. I am sorry that I can't recall the name.

Newt always wrote to Leta about the creatures that he met on his travels. He wrote her nearly twice a week. Every day if he wasn’t too busy. It was a slow and calm point in his routine when he could pause for a while and put his thoughts into some semblance of an order.

Newt kept her picture frame on his desk so that when he wrote, he could almost pretend that she was sitting across the table from him. In the photo, Leta was smiling as though she had a secret on the edge of her lips, one that she was just waiting to share with him. Sometimes, Newt even made her a cup of tea, which always ended up being Dougal’s cup of tea after all, so it was never really a waste.

There was nothing too mundane or long-winged for his writings. 

He wrote to her about Niff’s new diet, which Newt had been trying to get right ever since he first picked the little guy up in Australia. Now enjoying fish _and_ insects, Niff’s coat was starting to really shine, and his droppings were much more uniform. Niff was the kind of creature that definitely preferred to glisten. Whenever Newt watched him decorating and redecorating his bower with deft paws, he would think about how Niff was the best and brightest piece of treasure in the whole thing.

He told Leta about the newest Graphorn foal (Teddy) that he’d had to help Delilah deliver after he presented half-breech. It wasn’t a complete surprise, but Newt had been terrified all the same. When she had finally heaved and finished her long labour, Newt had stood there dumbly, sweat dripping, with blood-flecked mucous up to his armpits. But then his eyes had fallen back to Teddy, lying still in the grass looking pale and blue enough to belong in the ocean while Delilah licked at his little body-

Newt paused and re-read his words, scratching his nose with the end of his quill. He frowned at the paper and crossed that last part out. Leta could sometimes be a little bit squeamish with things like that and he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. Instead, he told her about how he’d cried with happiness and exhaustion when Ted had finally started breathing on his own. Delilah had cried too.

He wrote Leta about how thankful he was that his blueweed crop was so easy to grow inside of his case. He hadn’t been able to find out for sure if the herb grew wild in the Americas or not, and Newt certainly wasn’t going to risk any further dilutions to Addie’s medicinal tea. He wasn’t sure what he would do if her breath reverted to how it had been before. They had been making _so much_ progress together since he’d been able to interact freely with her.

Newt was never lonely on his travels. How could he be? He was lucky enough to carry his friends around with him wherever he went. He was learning more about how to communicate with them every day. Newt thought that either his parseltongue still needed a lot of work, or his Runespoor really weren’t all that interested in following his suggestions.

Sometimes, Newt’s parchment became splattered with ink with the speed of his writing. He often found that his hand couldn’t keep up with all the things he wanted to share with Leta. He liked to turn these splatters into drawings of his creatures. It gave the letter a bit more character, and he thought it might make her smile.

He wrote about the places he went, too. Leta had always said that she was going to travel when she left school. Of course, she had been more drawn to sparkling cities and rich cultures than he. Most of the places Newt had travelled he was pretty sure she would have wrinkled her nose at. The habitats that he liked best were a little less worn. Newt liked the kind of place where you could sit at night and listen for hours to the chirps and cries of different creatures and only _begin_ to wonder what they might look like. He loved dense rainforests and brackish mangroves, arid deserts and ocean rockpools. Newt liked ecosystems where everything had a role to play and he could just be there with mud up to his knees, watching life happen. He never seemed to find as many exciting creatures in the places where there were too many humans, which was the whole point of his grand adventure. It was definitely better for his purposes, Newt reasoned, to take the road less travelled.

Sometimes he thought that maybe Leta wasn’t really going to be someone who travelled the world after all. Newt had met a lot of people who talked at length about things that they were going to do or that they wanted to learn, always things that they would make time for _eventually_. But Newt noticed that there weren’t so many people who just went and _did_ those things. Maybe it was only something she used to talk to him about because she needed to dream of being away from Hogwarts, too.

It had been different for her. Newt had liked mostly all of the people at school, almost all of the teachers even. He just never seemed to have very much in common with most of his peers, and he couldn’t seem to learn in the way that his teachers wanted him to (Newt hadn’t realised until after he left Hogwarts just how much he truly loved to learn). Leta had always liked to spend time with Newt because he never asked her to share more than she wanted to. He just did what made him happy and then did his best to share some of that happiness with her. He smiled fondly at the thought.

Newt thought that the process of letter writing helped him to be a little more organised. Committing his thoughts to parchment was a good way to remember what he needed to do and plan for; like who needed their hooves trimmed, and when it was time for worming. He would always date the letters, and that way he remembered even boring administrative things like booking tickets and accommodations, and unavoidable applications for licences and permits. He almost never forgot deadlines anymore, thanks to Leta. She had always been better at that sort of thing when they were at school.

The conversations made him a better writer too. They allowed him to sort through his book material in a logical way. Newt had done a lot of things in his life that he was proud of, but with his book, he was finally going to be able to share all his knowledge and all of his passion with the whole wizarding community. It might even turn out to be the most important and far-reaching thing that he would ever do. It was a lot of responsibility and he wanted to make sure he got it right.

Leta was a great sounding board for this. When he wrote to her about his creatures, he knew better how he was going to introduce them all to the rest of the world. He had a more solid idea of which facts people needed to understand, and which were better saved for the extended edition. There were some things (their vulnerabilities and material value and such) that he had decided it was better for people not to know about at all. And there were other things that wizards _thought_ they knew about his creatures that he was only too happy to let them keep believing.

Newt wanted his book to be the kind that you couldn’t put down once you’d opened it. The kind of book that students wanted to read even if their professors told them that they had to. He wanted them to make drawings and notes in the margins as they pored over it, and he hoped that when they finished they would want to open it again at the start and read the whole thing again. Maybe even twice more if he was lucky.

Newt had been writing to Leta for years, ever since he’d been expelled. Across five continents and four oceans, he wrote a lot more when he was stuck on a steamship full of people like he was now.

During the Great War, his letters had been much shorter and more sporadic. He hadn’t had much privacy at the time, and it was always hard to find words that could really give truth to the depths of his thoughts and feelings, words that didn’t make him feel like he was begging for a vindication that he wasn't sure he deserved. Newt hadn’t been suited to war in the way that other men seemed to be.

It had been agony for him to know that he was forcing his mounts to go back into the line of fire again and again and again, especially when he himself had felt that same desperate animal instinct to run away. Creatures couldn’t understand the follies of humans. At least Newt had known why he was enduring it.

He still remembers feeling as though he were being suffocated with the constant noise and pain around him. He’d been on edge _all_ of the time through those long years. Letter writing was supposed to be a time to decompress, but there never seemed to be a place for that on the Eastern front. Leta had really helped him keep his head after the war. He wasn’t sure if he would ever stop grieving those experiences, but talking about it with a friend made his burden a little lighter.

Newt blinked to bring focus to the words on the parchment in front of him. His eyes were starting to feel heavy with sleep now. He looked down at his pocket watch and was surprised to find that his steamship would be arriving in New York harbour in just a few short hours. Newt was already looking forward to writing Leta about the city. He hadn’t even glimpsed it yet, but he was certain that she would want to hear about it.

He crossed the final _‘t’_ at the end of his name, signing off how he always did, ‘ _Wish you were here. Your friend, Newt.’_

Newt stood up, twisting left then right to crack his back and shoulders. The fingers of his left hand felt cramped from holding too tightly to his quill. With his other hand, Newt flicked his wand to send the mismatched teacups to begin washing themselves up.

The shining blue ink soon turned matte in the flickering candlelight. Newt folded the parchment and put it away in his topmost desk drawer with the rest of his correspondence. He squashed down the parchment and shoved the drawer closed until only a few weathered corners were still peeking out. The framed picture stayed where it always was on his desk.

Of course, Newt didn’t _actually_ send any of the letters. He hadn’t sent Leta anything since a few months after his expulsion. But it was nice to look at her warm smile while he put his thoughts to paper.

It felt more like he was having a conversation with an old friend.

**Author's Note:**

> When Queenie talks to Newt about Leta in the first movie, he is obviously uncomfortable, but I'm not sure he understands why. Thinking about that relationship makes him sad, but he doesn’t feel like he’s been hurt. I think that the friendships that he's developed over a few short days with the Goldsteins and Jacob have really made him question the validity of his relationship with Leta, and his idea of what friendship means. 
> 
> Certainly, when we meet Leta in TCOG, she seems warm, nostalgic, and a little apologetic towards Newt. She’s grown a lot as a person since she left school, back then I think Leta had embraced the idea that she was a bad person and she didn’t think she deserved friends. Adult Leta still has a lot of guilt and she still defaults to harshness when she feels threatened, but I think she has a good heart. 
> 
> This writing was me trying to find a backstory that fit with my view of both characters.


End file.
